Joseph Stalin was born on the 18th of December 1878 in modern-day Georgia, which was then part of the Russian Empire. He was the leader of the Soviet Union from 1924 till his death in 1953. Although he initially intended to govern the Soviet Union as a collective leadership, he ultimately became a dictator. He followed the communist ideology like his predecessor Lenin, however, Lenin greatly disapproved of Stalin becoming the leader.
Stalin’s Early Life
Stalin grew up in Georgia, the son of a shoemaker. He was the only child to survive infancy. Although the shoe business started off well, it later went bankrupt and his family fell into poverty. His father coped with this by getting drunk and beating him and his mother. Eventually, in 1883 Stalin and his mother moved out of the family home and then spent time in nine different rented rooms for the following decade. After settling down, Stalin was enrolled in school and academically excelled. He then worked his way into Socialist theories becoming part of a revolutionary group. He continued to work his way up through getting jobs in the communist magasine Prava. He gained positions in government and maintained them until Lenin’s death, when he ascended to power.
How did Stalin become the leader?
When Lenin died, there was no clear mechanism for how to chose a new leader. Before Lenin died, he had campaigned for Stalin not to be elected, believing that Stalin could not handle the power or responsibility of controlling the USSR – in his Last Testament, he described Stalin as an arrogant paper-pusher. Despite this, when Lenin died in 1924, Stalin was chosen as his successor. This was arguably due to Stalin forming smart alliances with Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev in 1922, during Lenin’s semi-retirement. These alliances protected him and gave him more influence than the other candidate for the position, Trotsky. However, his did not remain the clear leader for long. Between 1924 and 1927, there was a struggle for power between Stalin, and Kamenev, and Zinoviev, and Trotsky, and the Left Opposition. Those opposing Stalin formed the United Opposition which was then made illegal in 1927, finally solidifying Stalin’s power.
Stalin as a Leader
Overall, Stalin’s main aims as leader were to reform and industrialise Russia in order to bring it onto the same level as other European countries.
Collectivisation – Collectivisation was the reforming process that agriculture went through under Stalin. It introduced new, larger farms where peasants would pool labour and resources in an effort to operate more efficiently. The state would also provide tractors and fertilisers in order to modernise production. There were two main factors behind collectivisation. The first was economic – a poor series of poor harvests had meant a decrease in production which then increased the price of agricultural goods. This then led to the standards of living dropping for urban workers too, which would then impact the government. Since 1921, under Lenin, Russia had been selling grain abroad in order to make a profit which would then allow to buy tools to improve Russia’s industry. With the bad harvests came less and less profit, which meant that Russia wasn’t making any money to improve. Collectivisation was meant to fix this issue buy increasing harvests, and thus increasing profits again. The other factor was ideological – By this point communism had not done a lot to change agriculture, which meant that peasants had little interest in the complexities of farming and politics, they only really produced enough to feed themselves and for their own profit, they were not particularly interested in the good of the community. Collectivisation was the introduction of socialism into farming.
Mass collectivism began in December 1929 and Stalin appealed to the poorest peasants to lead the way. The new farms would control the land in the local area and the peasants would be able to use the resources to share a much bigger harvest. Unfortunately, for most peasants collectivisation meant a loss of independence, and a significant finical loss too, which led to lots of peasants rebelling, choosing to burn down the produce rather than hand it over. For example, 18 million horses were destroyed between 1929 and 1933. There was a brief pause in collectivism before it started again in 1931 due to a massive famine. The government would implement unrealistic targets and people would be punished when they were not met. It is estimated that around 10 million people died in the famine.
Five Year Plans – One of Stalin’s biggest economic changes was the introduction of Five Year Plans. These were where he would introduce targets to increase the production of specific goods over a period of five years in an attempt to modernise and industrialise Russia. The first five year plan didn’t actually last five years. It was more of a propaganda attempt at making people feel like some big change was taking place in Russia. Despite this, the first five year plan did actually have some substance to it. Between 1928 and the end of 1932 the Russian economy was transformed in the biggest economic experiment of all time. Coal production went from 36 million tonnes to 130 million tonnes, Iron went from 3 million tonnes to 15 million tonnes, and Oil went from 2 million tonnes to 29 million tonnes. This plan allowed Russia to emerge as an industrial giant and it formed the foundations for the Soviet Union to become a superpower.
By the time of the second Five Year Plan, the weakness in the labour force had been highlighted – productivity and discipline were low and they were holding back economic production. Stalin’s response to this was to introduce real incentives for workers who beat their targets and by appealing to the ‘heroic instincts’ of the Soviet people. However, this did not work large-scale or long-term and the plans under-invested in consumer good while over-investing in industry.
One good thing that came out of five year plans was that the workforce shifted to meet the demands of the targets, which did allow women the opportunities to become doctors, steels workers, canal workers etc.
The Great Terror
Although Russian leaders had a history of secret police and the prosecution of those that oppose them, Stalin took persecution to a whole new level.
By the end of 1934, Stalin launched a wave of political terror that took more than a million lives and forced 12 million people into labour camps. Purges like this allowed the notably-paranoid Stalin to remove any of his rivals. There were also economic reasons behind these purges – forcing people into the labour camps created a cheap and easy reserve of labour to aid in reaching the targets of the five year plans. The Great Terror had an immediate pretext- the murder of a key rival of Stalin’s, a man called Kirov. The murder gave Stalin a reason to hunt down a ‘secret terror group’ and a way to justify the executions of any political enemies. After the murder, there were an insane amount of arrests, interrogations, and several high profile trials.
Stalin’s secret police force, the NKVD, also became more and more extreme. Between 1936 and 1937, newer, less restrained recruits were hired in an effort to extend and speed up the Great Terror. The NKVD would actually set targets for arrests and from 1934 to 1938, some 330,000 party members were convicted as traitors to the people, including some members of the Red Army. Stalin never truly trusted the Red Army because many of them were appointed by Trotsky, who was arguably Stalin’s ‘arch-enemy’, and he believed that there was always a chance they could rise up and seize power. In july 1937, eight generals were tortured to the point of confessing treason, and the 18 months after that saw 34,000 soldiers were purged. By the end of 1938, the Great Terror had began to subside, but the fear it had instilled in the public would never truly go away.
Stalin’s Personality
One way in which Stalin was an effective dictator was by creating a very distinct personality, which was often linked back to Lenin. They were, effectively, the two most well known and most important people. After his death, Lenin was talked about as a magnificent leader, as if he was the father of all – they would quite often use religious language to suggest that Lenin was almost the ‘chosen one’. He was worshiped long after his death. Stalin cultivated his own image to tie into Lenin’s. Stalin was often described as the pupil and Lenin was the teacher. It was suggested that the ghost of Lenin was often with Stalin and that Stalin was being led by Lenin in everything that he did.
Stalin’s birthday also became a national celebration and there would be marches praising Stalin and the regime every December. This idolisation of Lenin and Stalin to an almost cult-like degree was beneficial because it strengthened the people’s perception of and their emotional ties to the regime, meaning that it would be easier to make them accept any decisions Stalin would later force upon them.
The Death of Stalin
Joseph Stalin dies in 1953 at the age of 74. He, like his predecessor Lenin, suffered multiple strokes after the end of the Second World War before succumbing to the final one on the 5th of March. He was given a state funeral service and it was declared that there would be four days of formal mourning. His body was embalmed and sent to a museum.